GoDaddy eyes regional languages for India growth

GoDaddy becomes the first internet domain registrar and web hosting company in India to offer products and customer service in regional Indian languagesPranbihanga Borpuzari | ECONOMICTIMES.COM | Updated: July 08, 2016, 10:33 IST

Picture source: ThinkStockDomain provider, GoDaddy Inc, on Thursday said its products and services would be now be available in Hindi, Marathi and Tamil to enable more small businesses (SMB) across India to build strong online presences. GoDaddy SMB products, its website, marketing, and customer support will be available in the three new languages, helping to empower the 88 per cent of India's population, which is not conversant in English.

With this GoDaddy becomes the first internet domain registrar and web hosting company in India to go local and offer products and customer service in regional Indian languages.

The strategy is led by a vision to develop and rollout localized language offerings which mirror India's Internet growth, a bulk of which is coming from regional locations that are also hotbeds of SMB and entrepreneurial activity in the country.

"India is the land of diversity with 22 languages and more than 1500 dialects spoken. It was clear to us that at some point we have to start thinking about this and how it plays in our business. We also looked at how the Internet has evolved in the country. India has about 420 million connected users, which is the second largest after China. However, most of the Internet growth in India is coming from Tier II and III cities. About 61 per cent of growth comes from these cities and local languages play a big part here," GoDaddy India and Australia, President and Managing Director, Rajiv Sodhi.

Sodhi adds that 73 per cent of the SMBs are also in Tier II and III towns, which actually forms the core of our business. Also, language has always been a major barrier for SMBs to go online and Sodhi says with the new offering a major part of that should be tackled.

"We looked at all the languages and how population is dispersed across all these languages. We also looked at the online population and our internal capability. We found about 61 per cent of the SMB base can be covered by these four languages - English, Hindi, Marathi and Tamil," says Sodhi.

Sodhi says as a validation of this initiative is that within two days of its launch, 40 per cent of the support volumes are now in local languages.

"GoDaddy is committed to helping small businesses grow and in helping eliminate barriers that prevent them from getting online. By localizing customer touchpoints, including our website, customer care, marketing and products, GoDaddy is focusing on being closer to its customers," says Sodhi.

Headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, US, GoDaddy also has its customer care office in Hyderabad that has a headcount of over 400. Development work for local languages was taken up by teams in the US and India.